Weather or not, Sanderson claims Junior Tour win with 74 at Foxchase

   If one of the goals of junior golf is learning to play competitive golf under all kinds of circumstances, consider the Philadelphia Section PGA Junior Tour stop at Foxchase Golf Club in Stevens, Lancaster County Saturday a challenging test in playing in cold weather.

   There’s a pretty good chance that the 19 golfers who braved Saturday’s brutal cold and wind will never, in the rest of their lives, play in colder weather than they did at Foxchase. And yet many of them not only survived, they thrived.

   Calen Sanderson of Skillman, N.J. took top honors in the 13-to-15 division with a 2-over-par 74 over the 6,421-yard, par-72 Foxchase layout. Two-over with wind chills in the 20s. Think about that. Sanderson had back-to-back birdies on the sixth and seventh holes on his way to the victory.

   Jun Lee of York was the runnerup with a 3-over 75 that featured a birdie on the second hole. Logan Paczewski of Dallas took third with a 76. That’s some pretty good playing by the top three in the younger boys division in that weather.

   Stephane de Brechard of Brooklyn, N.Y. finished fourth with an 81 that included an eagle on the par-4 15^th. Hamilton McNaughton of Lancaster placed fifth with an 83, Keller Mulhern of Exton was sixth with an 86, Samuel Mitchell of Pottstown was seventh with an 87 and Henry Stone of Kennett Square was eighth with an 88.

   Grey Carta of Hummelstown finished in ninth place with a 91 and another of the de Brechards of Brooklyn, Julien, rounded out the top 10 with a 94.

   No way I’m cutting it off at the top 10 in this instance, though. Not on a day when finishing the round was a feat in itself. And Clay Breidenstine of Hummelstown and James DiDomenico got it to the house, finishing 11^th and 12^th with respective scores of 100 and 101.

   In the 16-to-18 division, Stephen Lorenzo of Lower Gwynedd and Logan Hess of Willow Street each carded a 79 with the victory going to Lorenzo in a match of cards. Lorenzo edged Hess, a PIAA Class AAA East Regional qualifier as a junior at Penn Manor this fall, by a shot on the back nine to gain the tiebreaker edge.

   Shaun Fedor of Lancaster and Mason Wills of Lititz, a PIAA Class AAA Championship qualifier in his senior season at Warwick this fall, shared third place, each carding an 81. Logan Snyder of Dover finished fifth with an 85.

   The most impressive round of the day might have belonged to Megan Adelman of Bryn Mawr, who was one of only two girls who made the trek to Lancaster County and won the 13-to-15 title – her first of the wraparound 2017-’18 season – with an 83. Adelman has shown steady improvement as a Junior Tour regular throughout 2017, but an 83 in those conditions is a real bustout round.

   The only other girl in the field was Alyson Rentschler, a PIAA Class AA Championship qualifier as a junior at Hamburg this fall. Rentschler carded a 96 to claim a win in the 16-to-18 division, her first victory in 2017.

   You think those wins by Adelman and Rentschler are tainted because they were unopposed? No, I think Mother Nature provided some pretty stiff opposition on this day.